Did Hillary lose the 2016 election due to sexism?

I don’t know and we never will. Also, Comey! Emails! What I do want to say, though, is that this Rebecca Traister article purportedly about Clinton’s post-election life, is the best examination of the role of gender in her campaign that I have seen. Straight onto the Gender & Politics syllabus. My favorite quote:

The anger at Clinton from some quarters — in tandem with the beatification of her from others — reminds us just how much this election tapped into unresolved and still largely unexplored issues around women and power. In the aftermath, the media has performed endless autopsies. We have talked about Wisconsin, about Comey, about Russia, about faulty messaging and her campaign’s internal conflicts. We have fought over unanswerable questions, like whether Sanders would have won and whether Clinton was particularly mismatched to this political moment, and about badly framed conflicts between identity politics and economic issues. But postmortems offering rational explanations for how a pussy-grabbing goblin managed to gain the White House over an experienced woman have mostly glossed over one of the well-worn dynamics in play: A competent woman losing a job to an incompetent man is not an anomalous Election Day surprise; it is Tuesday in America. [emphasis mine]

It’s long, but there’s a decent chance you have the day off, so give it a read.

One Response to Did Hillary lose the 2016 election due to sexism?

I’ve lived a long time and in my days I’ve seen a lot of political candidates for office.
I have never seen one better equipped by knowledge and desire to bring government of, by and for the people than Hillary Clinton.